accident | Words on the Street

hit-by-car On Friday 13^th, I made the mistake of opening my front door and embarking upon a perilous journey along the pavement to the local Tesco Express a couple of hundred yards from where I live.

As I negotiated the incredibly dangerous wildlife infested grass verge and the chasm-like cracks between the pavement flags, a nice comfortable safe little driverless car mounted the pavement adjacent to the car park and ran me down.

I actually screamed – twice. A man scream, you understand, not a girly one, but prompted by a fear of the considerable damage to my person and excruciating pain that I was convinced would follow. I was knocked unceremoniously to the ground between two parked cars with my left leg directly in the path of the oncoming car’s nearside front wheel, which then traversed the said leg in the ankle area agonisingly slowly, as I was fervently praying it would not actually come to rest on top of it – I seem to remember it almost did and the thought horrified me: I imagine the shock affected my ability to recollect the precise course of events but my leg somehow eventually finished free of the wheel, thankfully.

The Tesco manageress was very kind and helped to comfort me while I was lying on the ground and ensured someone called an ambulance (she also gave one of the paramedics a bag of ice to put on the injured limb – so far as I know, this is still in the A & E staff-room freezer at Salisbury Hospital – I forgot to ask for it back). Another lady who also helped to look after me turned out to be a nurse – so that was a bonus.

The policeman who had attended the incident called to see me after we’d returned from the hospital and gave me the driver’s details in case I want to pursue an injury claim through the driver’s insurers. He’d viewed the CCTV footage and told me he couldn’t understand how I was still walking! Apparently, it was an automatic car and the driver must have left it in Drive instead of Park and trodden on the accelerator as he was getting out – with the hilarious consequences hereinbefore described. The poor old gentleman was distraught and has surrendered his driving licence to the police voluntarily – a somewhat precipitous action, I think, and I do feel genuinely sorry for him – when all’s said and done, it was just a freak accident and, by all accounts, the only one he’s had in all his years of driving.

Anyway, after thorough examination, X-rays, cleaning of a couple of cuts and minor scrapes and the application of a compression bandage, I was pronounced lucky, fit to go home and nowhere near as scathed (is that a word?) as I ought to have been. I was instructed to sit with my leg elevated for a couple of days with an icepack applied two or three times a day. I have cut one of those pointless Vacuvin thingies, you know the padded jackets you chill in the freezer and that fit round a bottle of wine (useful only if the bottle contains its, er, contents for any appreciable period of time after opening – not in our house, obviously) into a continuous strip which can be wrapped round the bottom of my leg and is secured with the strap from a baby’s high chair. Ingenious or what?

Ah, yes, the speed bump…

human-speed-bump

[July update: the injury is now an open wound which will take several months to heal *gulp*]

[September update: still an open wound, but slowly healing; down to once or twice a week at the medical centre to have dressings changed and compression bandages fitted]

[October update: almost healed and all bandages/dressings dispensed with; however, it still bloody well hurts!]

[December update: I am being referred to an orthopaedic surgeon. An appointment has been made for March 14th – apparently, the earliest available!]

[September 2017 update: now undergoing lower-limb physiotherapy once a week – two sessions to go. Seems to be helping but I can’t see things will improve much more. However, I have resurrected my bike from the depths of the garage so will continue to try and help myself]

I’m not sure if I’ve told you about the disaster which befell my brand new iPhone in a bathroom-based incident a while ago, after I’d had it barely a week – which just goes to show the verisimilitude of the statistic pointed out to me by several ~~piss-takers~~ well-wishers that two of the most common forms of damage caused to iPhones is the screen cracking and that occasioned by submersion in water. Mine fell into the *ahem* latter category.

And no, I didn’t undertake the immersion-in-a-pouch-of-rice treatment afterwards; I was too upset and actually quite concerned that a family member might find it and think it was a boil-in-the-bag ready meal, potentially making matters even worse.

Smarting from the incident, I wandered around the house in a daze, wondering what iniquitous deed I had perpetrated in my past which had rendered me deserving of such a harsh gadgetry-related punishment. Suddenly, I remembered; in an episode of The IT Crowd, precisely the same thing had happened to one of the main characters (Moss), after he had put his phone in that most conveniently placed of locations, the top shirt pocket – and I had laughed out loud.

My tweet to the show’s writer Graham Linehan, demanding compensation, elicited no response, so I turned my attention to my buildings and contents insurance, administered by a certain company from whom I could possibly have obtained a claim form in person if I had bothered to take the 20½-hour journey via Brittany Ferries from Plymouth. No, there isn’t a prize.

My first telephone conversation was with a very friendly and helpful young lady who, I realised after a subsequent conversation with another equally helpful young lady four days later (which was on the Friday afternoon), had done absolutely nothing she had promised, i.e. passed the matter to the company who dealt with damage repairs on their behalf. So the second young lady made the same promise and, all things considered, I couldn’t help feeling rather pessimistic about the outcome. However, I had a call within a couple of hours, giving me a reference number and informing me that DPD would be collecting the phone for repair or replacement on the Monday, between 9.00am and 6.30pm.

I had a text message on Monday morning saying that the phone would be collected – bizarrely – between 12.18pm and 1.18pm! It was therefore with a strange but totally unfounded disappointment that I welcomed the DPD bloke at 12.21pm.

The company dealing with the phone had told me it was repairable and would be returned via Royal Mail within 7 to 10 working days. Given that Royal Mail make a habit of doing things like ditching first-class post, conveniently forgetting to tell everyone about it, and bearing in mind the onset of Christmas mail, I was not all that optimistic.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I was forced to make four more telephone calls, the repairing company decided the phone couldn’t be mended, the insurer coughed up the full amount for a new replacement (less £35 excess) and, as soon as the dosh appeared in my bank account, I hastened down to the nearest iPhone merchant and bought one.

I’d had a Blackberry for almost three years (which my employer provided) but I finally decided enough was enough (I hated it) and that, after a good deal of research, I was desperate to have an iPhone. This is called an Apple turnover.*

*I’ll get me coat